Thursday, December 2, 2010

Rudolph -- the real story

Born in the spring, he was supposed to be the pride of Mr. & Mrs. Donner, and he was brought into the world with love and understanding…or so we were led to believe if we watch the annual show telling of the early life of Rudolph – The Red Nosed Reindeer.

But there is horror here. There is subjugation, and prejudices, physical abuse, mental abuse, control issues and, worst of all, hypocrisy of the worst sort. If the story can be believed as we have been watching for the past 40 years, this is a young deer who was treated with such disrespect and out-right hatred, it’s surprising he didn’t end up wearing an Army jacket in a church steeple with a high-powered rifle, a six pack of Pabst, a Zippo lighter, a picture of his girlfriend and half a pack of Camel cigarettes.

The fawn Rudolph was born with a birth defect. His nose, for whatever reason, be it bad genetic material, issues with in-breeding, or radiation from living close to the poles, glowed red. Not only did it glow a little bit, it glowed brightly with a blinding red light. And it wasn’t just a steady glow of red, it was a blinking red. The same blinking that one sees in the rear view mirror when caught doing 75 miles per hour in a 45 miles per hour zone.

So what’s the first thing Dad Donner does? He tries to hide the defect from others because he doesn’t want anyone else to know his kid isn’t perfect. He covers his child’s nose with some sort of crap dug up from the floor at cave in which they live.

Mr. Donner wanted his son to be “normal” so obviously, covering his son’s nose with crap is the way to do it. Who knew?

Mrs. Donner, with no spine of her own, acquiesces and allows her husband to cover the nose. This is the control issue. Mr. Donner speaks; Mrs. Donner listens and does what he says. There is no discussion, no give and take, and no compromise. Mr. Donner’s word in the cave is law and no one argues. He's a control freak and she’s spineless.

Also, from detailed analysis of the video, that was a very black-colored “mud” Mr. Donner used. Now I am no expert on mud in caves, but I’m thinking there was some fecal matter mixed in and if rubbing fecal matter on your kid’s nose is not abuse I don’t know what is. Where is Child Protective services? Why isn’t there an uproar?

Fast forward now to the reindeer games for the reindeer youth being held less than a year later. Nose packed inside and out with the special “mud,” Rudolph has developed a speech impediment. His sinuses have got to be clogged with the mud if it is being shoved in his nose by his “loving” dad every day of his life so he can be normal, and now he talks funny.

Clarice, the one deer in the entire herd (and really, the one who should be credited with saving Christmas because without her, Rudolph would have never had a girlfriend and would have ended up living in his parent’s basement, cleaning his guns and playing video games) approaches Rudolph and loves him at first sight, despite the big glob of crap plastered on his nose. This year-old-deer has the hots for defective Rudolph and goes to show that there is someone for everyone.

Another sleigh-puller in waiting is Fireball, and he befriends Rudolph for a short time. His real motivation in life is humping the female fawns and making future targets for hunters. Since all the other deer in the herd seem to have paired up, Fireball is stuck with Rudolph.

Comet, the “coach” of the young reindeer gives a pep talk to the young ones. Oh yes, good coaching there Comet: tell everyone what they can do if they work hard…be a part of the sleigh team that hauls Santa’s sleigh around the world in one night. Sure, there are plenty of openings because a lot of Santa’s reindeer have passed on….oh wait, no they haven’t. Unemployment among reindeer is well over 80 percent.

But the young bucks are not told of this dismal future. They are lied to by the coach. What’s worse, is the doe fawns don’t even have the chance to try out for the team! They probably have to make sandwiches and clean toilets for the rest of their happy North Pole lives.

“Very good, Rudolph!” Cheers Coach Comet when Rudolph takes flight after Clarice speaks the words “I think you’re cute” and out-classes the other deer in the young herd.

Even Santa is pleased with the raw natural talent of Rudolph as he happens to be walking by to check on Comet and the new recruits.

Everyone is cheering until the crap gets knocked off Rudolph’s nose, blinding everyone with it’s brilliant red flashing.

Then Rudolph is laughed at and made fun of for his defect. "You'll never be allowed to play in any reindeer games!" the poor fawn is told, by none other than his coach.

Rudolph’s “friend” Fireball, who we never hear from again because he obviously never made the sleigh team, turns on Rudolph the moment he finds out our hero is different. When a friend turns on you, the hurt is deep and Fireball showed his true ilk when he throws the deepest cutting insults by turning his back on a friend. He probably got also got a restraining order against him just to make sure Rudolph didn't try to continue to be friendly. Deer like Fireball don’t end up pulling sleighs, they end up on a man-cave wall with glass eyes.

Rudolph runs away, not only from the games and Clarice, but also from home, and causes his parents to worry and search for him. I don’t know why they did, it’s not like they were that attached to him, they didn’t track very well and it’s not like they couldn’t make more.

Weeks and months go by and Rudolph encounters other people who accept him for who he is: Hermey, the elf with the oral fixation, Yukon Cornelius, a minor miner who licks frozen digging implements, tasting for silver or gold, and a plethora of misfit toys stranded on a cold deserted island where they are overseen by the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz.

The lion tells Rudolph to return home and face his hell instead of hiding from it, so off he goes by himself, leaving his “friends” behind. Notice a theme here? Rudolph is so screwed up in the head, the first chance he gets, he abandons his friends, much like that loser Fireball.

His friends go after him and only with their help is Rudolph able to save his mother, father and girlfriend who are being threatened with being torn limb from limb from the Abominable Snowman known as a “Bumble.”

After conking him on the head with huge chunks of ice, cold-cocking him into submission, Hermey, the dentist with absolutely zero accreditation and no experience, yanks out the Bumble’s teeth without anesthesia. Can you even imagine the pain he had upon waking? Then, to make matters worse for the Bumble, Yukon and his sled team of vicious dogs punch, bite scare and push the poor creature over a cliff and to what everyone assumes will be his death. We’re led to believe he plummeted to his death along with Yukon and his yapping mutts. It’s only later we find out that miraculously, Bumbles bounce, and Yukon and the sled team who fell hundreds of feet into a frozen crevasse, were able to bounce their way out of it and lead happy lives.

The Bumble, now toothless and eating meals through a straw after years of eating meat on the bone, is forced into servitude. He was better off dead in the crevasse.

Rudolph saves his family and is a hero and escorts them back to the North Pole only to learn there is a heavy weather storm coming in and Christmas will probably be cancelled. Santa, who only really works one day a year, needs to take the day off. To blazes with rescheduling, let’s just cancel the whole freaking holiday because of the weather. What is this, public school?

Surprise, surprise. There’s going to be heavy weather North Pole. No one would have suspected it. How could such a thing happen? What? It’s not snow? Its fog you say? Fog at the North Pole where the relative humidity is like six percent? Wow, what a surprising  turn of events!

Here Santa and his elves have been living and working there for so long and it never occurred to them that fog could be so bad at the North Pole. What with magic reindeer that can yank his fat ass and a sleigh full of toys around the world in one night, who’d’ve expected a little fog could hold them up? What, they never flew over Los Angeles? Have they even tried cruising at low altitude around New York? Does fog slow them in the arctic when England is gripped by fog so heavy, the British get lost going to the bathroom?

Thank heaven it didn’t snow or something.

Moreover, thank heaven for Rudolph’s nose. When Santa is done bemoaning about how bad the weather is locally, forgetting perhaps the speed at which the reindeer can fly, and telling everyone the horrible news about the cancellation of Christmas, Rudolph, and his nose which glows so bright, is asked to guide his sleigh that night.

Santa could have put aircraft landing lights on the sleigh like every aircraft that has ever flown in the arctic, but no; he has to use Rudolph…the deer that everyone ostracized, made fun of and chased off a year earlier.

Since the fat lazy Santa doesn’t even do a half way decent job of modernizing his own sled, he uses the deer that hasn’t been home for more than a year, hasn’t seen much of his family, lived with misfits, fought Bumbles, and has never even participated in a sleigh launch, to lead the procession. Where is the decision tree here? What was he thinking?

What a whack job.

Coach Comet had to be eating crow for over 100,000 miles because a prospective trainee of his, who hadn’t even taken one class, had showed him up and was now, nominally, his superior, by being the lead reindeer.

If Comet or Cupid, Donner or Blitzen didn’t want to kill Rudolph for showing them up and for having to smell his sanctimonious ass for hundreds of thousands of miles of leading them around, one of those deer were wishing some hunter somewhere should have taken a potshot at the glowing red-nose. With Rudolph’s return to grace, Fireball was probably the deer Santa left in charge of cleaning the frozen poop out of the pastures and would probably have accepted the contract for a used doe and two lottery tickets.

Worst of all, Rudolph does it! He harnesses up in front of all the experienced reindeer and hauls the heavy sled into the night’s heavy fog, which because of the wind and frigid temperatures at the North Pole, has turned into snow, of all things.

Just imagine such a turn of events. Rudolph should have told Santa how far up his ass to shove the sleigh, cracked wise about the lack of organization for such a huge endeavor, then strutted back to his cave for a few of his own reindeer games and to make little fawns with Clarice.

It was all well and good to make fun of poor Rudolph when no one could use him and because he was different, but when they needed him it’s all love and forgiveness.

So sweet you want to puke sugar cubes.

I hate that story.